Long May Horses Shit the Streets

Horses and ponies, dealers and wheelers
The street is a farmyard for a day…
Dreamers and schemers, thinkers and drinkers
Everyman is a boy at his play…

Some folk do not like it, being not from the land
Think the smell and the droppings unsightly
Forget from the farm comes all life and its charm
Can be seen in the old men stepping sprightly
Among strong steeds for whom the dealers heart bleeds
As he settles a deal with a spit on the palm of the hand
Why is it today we want to shut it away
Lose a tradition of our native land?

I remember as a youth horses outside our door
Young men on ponies galloping wild up the hill
We felt no fear of horses or the folk here
We felt the pulse of life and the thrill
But folk bring in laws, so with fees we grease paws
Of officials who tell us its for our own good
What helped us get by for 400 years they now deny
They say stop the fair now we should.

Who are these faces in suits who profess as truths
The lies they throw at us there?
Long may it live, or I’ll never forgive
The hard hearts who try to kill Banagher horse fair.